J.R. Teeter
Founder & Artistic Director/CEO
Founder of The Lambda Project

  
Mr. Teeter has been the artistic director of Bread & Water Theatre since he founded the organization in 2000 while attending Nazareth College of Rochester.  At BWT he has directed Dr. Faustus, Night Passengers, The Yellow Wallpaper adapted by Mr. Teeter and Marcy J. Savastano from the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Little Prince adapted by Mr. Teeter and the Bread & Water Theatre company of 2003 from the novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and the world premiere of The Night before the Morning After and The Lambda Project: An Empty Closet.  The latter show is performed annually at BWT's Rainbow Theater Festival, a series of theatrical productions devoted to queer themes and the Rainbow Pride Flag.  The Lambda Project itself is based on the real-life stories of participants and themes derived from the rainbow flag.  Mr. Teeter helped revive the Rainbow Theater Festival in 2004, providing it with a new mission statement and goals for the future.

Mr. Teeter also wrote That Kiss which first premiering at 2004's Rainbow Theater Festival.   The Autobiography of Thorton J. Wright first premiered at Creative Theatre - Muddy Waters Players as a staged reading.  A revised Autobiography debuted  in 2004 at Bread & Water Theatre directed by Associate Director Carl Girard.  Mr. Teeter will performed in the role of Stan.

Theatre is an evolutionary process and Mr. Teeter is no different.  Previously accustomed to adapting well-known novels into theatrical events and creating fictionalized plays from the ground up, Mr. Teeter has begun to adopt the ideals of the "Theatre of Testimony" in which real-life sources are used to create a dramatic work.  This evolution can be charted in the Lambda Project where testimonials were taken in the construction of a dramatic text and in Autobiography... where the previously authored speeches of Samuel Clemens were used flesh out the persona of the late Thorton J. Wright.  Two upcoming works featuring this style of theatre are the Lambda Project: Every Step May be Fruitful and Witnesses of Kitty Genovese.  The latter play is especially poignant in that it follows the murder and trial of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese a woman killed outside her apartment building while others looked on and did nothing.